On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:32:37 +1100, Cheng-Zhong Su
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> The splitting of languages is mainly due to historical and socio-cultural
>> reasons. (Ex: The French spoken in Canada did not split from the one
spoken
>> in Europe, while Afrikaans became a different language from Netherlandic).
>>
>> Olivier
>> http://sambahsa-mundialect-org.blogspot.com
>
>The separation started from local accent. Without TV and radio, village to
>village, town to town could get their own local accent. But the alphabetic
>system required every letter reflect these local accents then gradually the
>writing system had to change to adapt the changing accent. On the other
>hand, the Chinese writing system was irrelevant to pronunciation. So until
>now, if a Chinese don't know Japanese, they can still communicate by hand
>writing.
>Now we have TV and radio, things could get better as you have said; French
>in Canada doesn't split from Europe. But I still found that the English has
>different pronunciation among British, America, Australia and Canada. I hope
>it will not affect the writing system.
>
>Cheng-Zhong Su
>
Sellamat Cheng!
Well, that often starts from local accent, but that does not explain anything.
French-Canadians have a strong accent and use some words that are
unknown in Europe; that's why everyday speech in French-Canadian can be
sometimes hardly understandable for a French-speaking European. The same
can be said about the other kinds of French spoken in various parts of the
world. But the language has basically remained the same with its conjugations,
its orthograph.... In general, written French has remained the same all around
the World. The strong litterary culture of French-speaking people may explain
why the language has not developped into a creole in Canada, though French-
Canadians had almost no relations with the motherland during two centuries
(approximately 1760-1960). On the contrary, French developped into a Creole
where it was spoken by people from very various origins (often in places
where slaves were brought from Africa).
Afrikaans is grammatically a language different from Netherlandic. The
vocabulary has mainly remained Dutch, the pronounciation has often changed
and the grammar has been dramatically altered. The Afrikanders were mostly
Calvinists which praised the reading of the Bible in Dutch, but they had to
assimilate other Protestants from Germany and France. And (though South
Africa tragically developped Apartheid) there were a lot of contacts with
slaves and natives (Though they are often forgotten, there are a lot of
Afrikaans-speaking Mestissoes).
Olivier
http://sambahsa-mundialect-org.blogspot.com